When comparing Kafka vs Timber, the Slant community recommends Kafka for most people. In the question“What are the best log management, aggregation & monitoring tools?”Kafka is ranked 9th while Timber is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose Kafka is:

Beautiful, modern, easy interface

Pro

Real-time graphing

Because Timber fully embraces structured data, graphing is simple, real time, and fast. They provide a number of aggregates you can graph on.

Pro

Automatic context & structured data

Timber provides native libraries that automatically attach metadata to your logs. They've designed a schema that defines events and context, which normalizes the data and makes querying, alerting, and graphing simple and reliable.

Pro

Easy installation

Timber can be installed in < 1 min and usually with a single command. It asks your for your application details and provides 1 set of simple instructions.

Pro

Simple pricing and plans. No feature matrices.

Besides the free plan, Timber doesn't impose limits on the number of users, alerts, etc. It's entirely based on the amount of data allowed for the plan. It's refreshingly straightforward.

Pro

Real-time alerts with thresholds

The alerts are real-time and the approach is thoughtful. Instead of blasting you with alerts every time it's triggered, they change the state of the alert once, notify you once, and then notify you again when the alert is no longer an issue.

Pro

Excellent documentation

Timber's docs are detailed and thoughtful, both for the service as well as the libraries they offer.

Pro

No rate limiting

Beyond the space your plan is allowed to use, there is no rate limiting.

Pro

Logs show up quickly

Logs show up < 3 seconds of when they are generated

Pro

SQL query your logs (w/ join support)

Timber allows you to SQL query your logs just like you would a traditional database. The JOIN support is very powerful.

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Cons

Con

Java is a resource hog

Java is a resource hog, making this far too slow unless you have money to throw at multiple servers with 1/2TB of ram.

Con

Need Zookeeper

Kafka can only work with Zookeeper

Con

Not really a centralized log management tool

It only takes in events from specified "apps", not all unstructured data. And, if you select "other" (apps), it just says:

Bummer! We don't support apps of this type yet.

Con

Not available on self-hosted or bare metal

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